Thursday, August 28, 2014

This is Falling by Ginger Scott

The Basics:This is Falling by Ginger ScottSelf-PubbedBook One in Falling seriesNew Adult, contemporary romancePublished August 29, 2014Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.Amazon.caKobo.comWhy I picked up this book:I'm often tempted by New Adult right now, and I really liked the blurb.

Blurb:First, I had to remember how to breathe. Then, I had to learn how to survive. Two years, three months and sixteen days had passed since I was the Rowe Stanton from before, since tragedy stole my youth and my heart went along with it.

When I left for college, I put a thousand miles between my future and my past. I’d made a choice—I was going to cross back to the other side, to live with the living. I just didn’t know how.

And then I met Nate Preeter.

An All-American baseball player, Nate wasn’t supposed to notice a ghost-of-a-girl like me. But he did. He shouldn’t want to know my name. But he did. And when he learned my secret and saw the scars it left behind, he was supposed to run. But he didn’t.

My heart was dead, and I was never supposed to belong to anyone. But Nate Preeter had me feeling, and he made me want to be his. He showed me everything I was missing.

And then he showed me how to fall.

My thoughts:First, contemporary new adult. We know this genre by now - girl with sad secrets meets boy with sad secrets, sexual tension ensues, they come together somehow, sad secrets rear their ugly heads, couple splits, then comes to realize that they're better together than apart. Probably along the way, they both start to realize what they want out of life, and that it's more than what they ever allowed themselves to want before hand.All right, so maybe that isn't the universal tale for contemporary New Adult, but the personal growth/figuring out of identity combined with some kind of horrific something in the past, and usually some amount of snark/tension between love interests is, I think, probably the norm. Or at least has been for me.So when I picked up This is Falling by Ginger Scott, I was expecting more of the same. Probably to get won over by some emotional truth, probably to root for our hero and heroine to realize how perfect they are together, probably to roll my eyes at some, but not all, of the angsting.I could not have underestimated this book more. Could not.I cried so many tears. Of joy as well as sadness. I ached, *ACHED* for these characters. Nate is so sweet and fierce and just... so gone over for poor, broken, brave Rowe. And she's trying so hard and just... wow. So much. All the feels. All of them.There's a moment completely unrelated to these two that had me burst into spontaneous crying out of *no where*. I won't spoil it, but it involved Rowe and her roommates near the beginning of the book. I was caught just as off guard as Rowe was, and it just... tears. And that had me primed to cry through out the rest of the book - at the highs and the lows.And there are plenty of highs to balance out the lows. As well as some funny moments to complete the experience - the pranking alone provided relief from the seriousness and some of it had me giggling (I'm not usually someone who enjoys pranks, but these all worked out fairly entertainingly).I've never read Ginger Scott before, but I will look for more books from this author because this book had that spark of something *more* that elevates a book. Bottom line:I was completely drawn in by This is Falling. I was rooting for Rowe and Nate to come together. I went on the emotional roller coaster of their friendship with them. And it made me think more about real people in Rowe's position and how they cope.I strongly recommend this one.5 starsFor fans of new adult, contemporary romance, emotional stories, baseball